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Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke: Singin’ the Blues

Posted in History, Jazz with tags , , on September 4, 2022 by telescoper

 Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke became a jazz-age romantic legend not only by playing brilliant cornet but also by drinking too much bad prohibition liquor resulting his premature death in 1931, at the age of only 28. His short life was punctuated by episodes of very bad health caused by chronic alcoholism in an era when the only booze that was available was bathtub gin or rotgut whisky. Despite all his problems, Bix still gave us some of the greatest ever jazz records.

Although he was of middle-class white origins, Bix’s playing was deeply admired by leading black musicians of the day notably the great Louis Armstrong. Some years ago I listened to a radio play called Bix: Singing the Blues which is a fictional account of the only occasion in which Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong played together, in a private, after-hours session. Given the description of that as “fictional” I assumed that Bix and Satchmo didn’t know each other well. Recently, however, I came across a recording of Louis Armstrong talking about Bix Beiderbecke that shows I was wrong:

(There is one little bit of confusion in the discussion: Bix wasn’t 31 when he died: he died in 1931, at the age of 28. )

So how good was Bix? Well, make your own mind up. Here is his classic version of Singing the Blues, with Frankie Trumbauer’s Orchestra in 1927, a three minute track in which Bix’s stunning solo starts a minute in and lasts a minute.

Jazz being largely improvised music, it is often a bit rough around the edges; even the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens have their share of duff notes. Bix’s solo on this record with that beautiful ringing, bell-like tone, and effortless swing at what is quite a slow tempo, is as close to perfection as you’ll ever find.

But you don’t need to take my word for it.

During his heyday in the1920s Louis Armstrong played virtually every popular tune that was put in front of him, including many songs that seemed unpromising from a jazz perspective, and in the process turned any amount of base metal into solid gold. Singin’ the Blues was a smash hit, but Louis Armstrong refused to play it. When asked why he replied that he didn’t think he could play it as well as Bix. There is no higher praise.

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A Memory of Dunsink

Posted in Biographical, History, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on September 2, 2022 by telescoper
Dunsink Observatory

Just time for an early morning post before I get the train in order to attend the second day of this year’s Irish National Astronomy Meeting at Dunsink Observatory (in the above picture, which I took yesterday morning). Incidentally, Dunsink Observatory is Réadlann Dhún Sinche in the Irish language.

Thinking about this meeting ahead of the event reminded me of a loose end, which I managed to tidy up this week.

Once upon a time, before the pandemic, I was involved in various events to celebrate the centenary of the famous eclipse expeditions of May 1919 which had a strong connection with Dunsink Observatory (see e.g. here). Among these things was an invitation to write a paper on the subject, which appeared in Contemporary Physics in June 2019.

Contemporary Physics being a commercial journal the paper was published behind a paywall. The publication rules however allowed the paper to be made freely available after an embargo period of one year.

I had intended to put the paper on arXiv in June 2020 when the embargo period lapsed, but at that point Covid-19 had taken hold, my workload went through the roof and I forgot about it until this week when a combination of my forthcoming trip to Dunsink and the appearance of my student’s first paper on arXiv conspired to remind me. Finally, therefore, the paper has now appeared in a fully open-access form on the arXiv here, just over two years later.

The title is A Revolution in Science: the Eclipse Expeditions of 1919 and the abstract reads:

The first direct experimental test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity involved a pair of expeditions to measure the bending of light at a total solar eclipse that took place one hundred years ago, on 29 May 1919. So famous is this experiment, and so dramatic was the impact on Einstein himself, that history tends not to recognise the controversy that surrounded the results at the time. In this article, I discuss the experiment in its scientific and historical background context and explain why it was, and is, such an important episode in the development of modern physics.

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The Death of Michael Collins

Posted in History with tags , , , , on August 22, 2022 by telescoper
Michael Collins in full dress uniform, pictured a few days before his death.

Today marks the centenary of the death of Michael Collins during the Irish Civil War. The event was marked by a ceremony yesterday at Béal na Bláth, where Collins was shot in the head and killed by a sniper on 22nd August 1922. He was 31 years old.

The Civil War had erupted over the the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the pro-Treaty National Army (of which Collins was Commander-in-Chief) fighting against anti-Treaty forces. Opponents of the Treaty felt that the Irish Free State it created fell far short of the Republic they had fought for during the War of Independence. In particular the Treaty required an Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown, which many Republicans found totally unacceptable.

On 22nd August, with Free State forces gaining the upper hand, Collins was travelling through County Cork with a convoy including an armoured car, when it was ambushed by soldiers of the anti-Treaty IRA. Instead of trying to escape, the convoy stopped and a gunfight developed during which Collins was shot dead. He was the only fatality. There was no official inquiry into the events at Béal na Bláth and nobody knows for sure who fired the fatal shot. The death of Michael Collins, following the death a few days earlier of Arthur Griffith, was a big setback for the leadership of the Free State and the already bitter Civil War descended into cycle of atrocities and reprisals. The fighting was to grind on until May 1923.

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Megalithic Mystery Solved!

Posted in Biographical, History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on August 8, 2022 by telescoper

This morning I realized that almost exactly four years ago I visited the megalithic passage tomb at Knowth. In my post about that visit I mentioned the extraordinary stone carvings found outside the tomb and their possible connection with astronomy. Following on from ChorizoGate I can finally reveal that the solution to this ancient mystery is in fact gastronomical.

Images from the passage tomb at Knowth
Images of sausages

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The Dead Zoo

Posted in Architecture, History, Television with tags , , on August 1, 2022 by telescoper

I don’t often post about television but I couldn’t resist a quickie about a fascinating programme I just watched called The Dead Zoo, about Dublin’s splendid Natural History Museum, which opened in 1857. I visited this place way back in 2019 on which occasion I took this picture of the interior:

I thought the museum was wonderful if a bit creepy. I remember thinking while I wandered around that I wouldn’t like to be stuck there overnight, surrounded by over 10,000 dead animals in Victorian glass cabinets. It would make a grand setting for a ghost story!

The building had been somewhat neglected and the splendid roof was prone to leaking, so the Museum was closed for renovation in 2020 and all the specimens on the upper floors – including the huge skeleton of a Fin Whale that you can see in the photo hanging from the ceiling – were removed to a storage facility.

This operation -carried out against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic – is the subject of Paul Duane’s excellent documentary, the trailer of which you can watch here:

If you didn’t get the chance to watch it you can catch it on the RTÉ Player here.

The work on the roof and other renovations will take some time to complete but the ground floor will re-open to visitors tomorrow (2nd August 2022). I imagine it will be pretty busy and you have to book in advance, though as with all Ireland’s National Museums, admission is free.

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A pretty simple thing…

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on July 27, 2022 by telescoper

In a state of not inconsiderable excitement, I showed the above picture (which appears in yesterday’s post) to a friend who shrugged and said “It doesn’t look like much..”. My response was “Well, you wouldn’t look like much at z=16.7…”

That reply was of course inspired by a famous exchange between Fred Hoyle and R.O. Redman recounted here:

Fred once started a talk by saying, ‘Oh, Ooh, basically a star is a pretty simple thing.’ And from the back of the room was heard the voice of R. O. Redman, saying, ‘Well, Fred, you’d look pretty simple too, from ten parsecs!

I’ve heard this story told by many people in different versions involving different characters, including Eddington, but I think it is generally accepted to have been between Hoyle and Redman, though this may well not have been the first comment of its type. If anyone knows any more please let me know!

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James Webb: the wrong name for a Space Telescope

Posted in History, LGBTQ+, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on July 13, 2022 by telescoper

Following yesterday’s excitement about the new images from the James Webb Space Telescope I thought I’d share this video documentary that explains why the choice of name for this facility is highly inappropriate and should be changed. This is a matter I’ve blogged about previously, in fact, but the video is new.

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A Grim Centenary

Posted in History with tags , , , on June 28, 2022 by telescoper

Today marks the centenary of the “official” outbreak of the Irish Civil War. Full-scale conflict had been threatening to erupt since the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 as many people who had fought so hard for independence were profoundly unhappy that the treaty had not delivered the Republic that was their wish. For example, members of the Dáil Éireann of the “Irish Free State” formed in 1921 still had to swear allegiance to the British Monarchy. Ireland did not formally become a Republic until 1949.

Exhausted by the War of Independence and fearful of British threats should the Treaty fail, a majority of the general population in Ireland accepted its terms, but a sizeable minority were determined in their opposition. In April 1922 anti-Treaty forces seized and occupied the Four Courts in Dublin with the aim of paralyzing the administration of the Free State. On June 22nd 1922 Field Marshal Henry Wilson was assassinated outside his home in London, allegedly by members of the anti-Treaty IRA. British authorities ordered their troops to attack Dublin in response, but the attack didn’t go ahead.

At dawn on 28th June 1922, one hundred years ago today, pro-Treaty forces began bombarding the Four Courts in Dublin with two 18-pounder field guns, borrowed from the British Army, in an attempt to dislodge the anti-Treaty forces. In a week of fighting the Four Courts were destroyed along with many important documents, and an archive going back 1,000 years.

So began a terrible Civil War which lasted almost a year.

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Schrödinger’s Theatre

Posted in Education, History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on June 21, 2022 by telescoper

Although it’s relatively old news in Ireland, a colleague recently sent me a story from Physics World about Trinity College Dublin’s decision to change the name of its Schrödinger Lecture Theatre (to the Physics Lecture Theatre). The Provost, Fellows, Foundation Scholars and the other members of Board, of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin (to give it its proper title) took this decision in the light of revelations about Erwin Schrödinger‘s predatory sexual conduct towards very young girls.

According to my careful research carried out by reading his Wikipedia page, Schrödinger never actually worked at Trinity College Dublin; the Theatre in question was named in his honour after he delivered his famous lectures on What is Life there in 1943.

Reactions to the decision to rename the Theatre have generated a wide range of reactions from physicists and non-physicists alike. For my part I think it is the right decision. As the Physics World article states:

As an educational institute, we cannot condone or glorify someone who abused the trust between teacher and student.

Jonathan Coleman, Head of School Physics TCD

To me this is quite different from attaching Schrödinger’s name to his equation or even his cat. His unsavoury conduct should not mean that his scientific achievements should be “cancelled” . These are and should continue to be recognized through terms like Schrödinger’s Equation. As far as I am aware, however, Schrödinger did not build any lecture theatres.

It’s up to Trinity to decide what to call its rooms, of course, but that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to have opinions about the decision. I’d therefore invite you to express yours through the following poll:

Of course if you wish to expand on your opinion you may do so through the box below.

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Summer Solstice 2022

Posted in History, The Universe and Stuff on June 21, 2022 by telescoper

The Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere takes place today, Tuesday 21st June 2022, at 10.14am Irish Time (9.14 UTC). Among other things, this means that tomorrow is the longest day of the year around these parts. According to this website, the interval between sunrise and sunset in Dublin today will be 17 hours 5 minutes and 6 seconds. which is 2 seconds longer than yesterday while tomorrow will be four whole seconds shorter than that.

It’s all downhill from now on.

Days will get shorter from tomorrow until the Winter Solstice in December, although this does not mean that sunset will necessarily happen earlier on 22nd than it does tomorrow. In fact it is a little later. Nor does it mean that sunrise will happen later tomorrow; in fact it is a little earlier.

You can find such things out by looking at a table of the local mean times of sunrise and sunset for Dublin around the 2022 summer solstice. This shows that the earliest sunrise was actually on 17th June and the latest sunset is on 25th.

This arises because there is a difference between mean solar time (measured by clocks) and apparent solar time (defined by the position of the Sun in the sky), so that a solar day does not always last exactly 24 hours. A description of apparent and mean time was given by Nevil Maskelyne in the Nautical Almanac for 1767:

Apparent Time is that deduced immediately from the Sun, whether from the Observation of his passing the Meridian, or from his observed Rising or Setting. This Time is different from that shewn by Clocks and Watches well regulated at Land, which is called equated or mean Time.

The discrepancy between mean time and apparent time arises because of the Earth’s axial tilt and the fact that it travels around the Sun in an elliptical orbit in which its orbital speed varies with time of year (being faster at perihelion than at aphelion).

If you plot the position of the Sun in the sky at a fixed time each day from a fixed location on the Earth you get a thing called an analemma, which is a sort of figure-of-eight curve whose shape depends on the observer’s latitude. Here’s a photographic version taken in Edmonton, with photographs of the Sun’s position taken from the same position at the same time on different days over the course of a year:

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The summer solstice is the uppermost point on this curve and the winter solstice is at the bottom. The north–south component of the analemma is the Sun’s declination, and the east–west component is the so-called equation of time which quantifies the difference between mean solar time and apparent solar time. This curve can be used to calculate the earliest and/or latest sunrise and/or sunset.

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